Another notable Swede is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued Swedish passports and sheltered thousands of Jews in Budapest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg . He disappeared and died in Russian captivity.
(Random lighthearted fact: because his exact date of death is disputed, Google's AI summary in the search results tells me his age is 113.)
It's not so surprising. Nansen was conservative-ish politically.
Seeing the effects of the famine in Ukraine radicalized Quisling as a fanatical anti-socialist. He also married a Ukrainian woman (bigamously, but that's another story). As a fanatical anti-socialist in the 20s-30s he fell in with the wrong crowd.
Who knows if Nansen too would have, if he had lived to see the rise of Hitler. Probably not, as he was usually fairly ambivalent about politics, but it wouldn't have been terribly surprising either.
> And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.
Reality is really context dependent, and with lots of nuance. Obviously being anti-fascist and helped out taking down the Nazis makes you more of a "good guy" than "bad guy" for that specific moment, but obviously that doesn't mean the USSR or Russia is exclusively the "good guys" always, which goes the same for every country out there.
Where are you finding these young people praising the USSR though? It always seems like a talking point from conservatives on the internet, as I'm never able to find these elusive USSR-praisers in real-life. There is a ton of people ironically saying they love USSR, but surely these are not the people you're talking about?
Russians were allies with nazi Germany at the start of the war. They did not have any problem with nazi Germany when they invaded Poland together. Only later did they hate Germany because the Germans betrayed them. To this day Russians don't have a problem with facism (Russia is facist). They only have a problem with the nazis because they betrayed Russia.
The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.
I have no idea what was bad about the fascists that wasn't equally true of the Soviets - the underlying systems of thought and actions were essentially the same. There is no sense in which I can see the Soviets were the "good guys." They were simply allies of convenience, and the net result of the war was that half of Europe was handed over to them and lived under this horrific regime.
>The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.
Maybe my perspective is slanted, but it seems that nobility was way more badass back then. Nowadays they just hide out in Saint-Tropez, Monaco, or chill on their yachts and don't care much about the world.
I think your perspective is slanted. 99% of nobility were materialistic, detached (and probably inbred) sociopaths, just like 99% of billionaires and heads of state today.
The Stern gang, who killed him, became the IDF (along with the Haganah and the Irgun). These groups performed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that allowed Israel to be built on Palestinian land (commonly known as the Nakba).
> One of the chief organisers of the assassination was Yitzhak Shamir, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1984.
The UK is also historically a strong ally of Israel. Like other former colonies they looked to britain for help and guidance. After all the whole state was built on British foundations. After a while britain realised it was in their interests to help Israel and their relationship even today is one of mutual respect.
I think it goes to show the limits of the conflict between the British and the jews of palestine. It was never personal and therefore while there was much anger and resentment, there was never any hate.
The history of how the alliance came about is fascinating. It started with the suez war. Their relationship with the US came about at the same time as the breakdown with the French and was helped by the fact that the US saw Israel as a convenient proxy against the Soviets.
That is one of the most grotesque whitewashes of Zionist terrorism I have ever read. You are trying to rewrite a story of Zionist terrorism and colonial succession into a heartwarming family drama.
The idea that Zionists were just a colony "looking to Britain for guidance" is an understatement. They were a de facto rival colonial project that used terror to expel the British, the Zionists even ironically described the British as occupiers of Palestine.[0] The Zionists weren't looking for "guidance," they were busy planting bombs[1].
Your claim that it was "never personal" and there was "no hate" is a disgusting lie. Tell that to the families of the British sergeants the Irgun hanged and booby-trapped. Tell that to the scores of British officials murdered in the King David Hotel bombing. It was a vicious Zionist terror campaign, and pretending otherwise is obscene.
Finally, your "convenient proxy" explanation sanitizes the ugly truth. The West didn't ally with Israel despite its history of terrorism, but they allied with it because of it. Israel's violent founding proved it could be a ruthless and effective enforcer for Western imperial interests. That is the real foundation of your "special relationship."
The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons:
There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to adhere to (demilitarized state, practically land-locked on a mozaic of patches that amounts to a fraction of the country's total area and surrounded everywhere with ever-increasing Israeli settlement projects.
That effectively weakened Fatah's position which essentially morphed into a caretaker on behalf of the Israelis for the day-to-day. And the resistance weight shifted from secular factions to the Hamas.
The claim that "The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF" is a classic piece of Zionist propaganda because it uses a technically true event, the Altalena Affair, to paint a profoundly false picture. It's a self-serving myth designed to launder the history of the Irgun and create a clean break between the "respectable" new "state" of Israel and its terrorist antecedents, a break that never truly happened.
The Altalena incident was not a moral battle against terrorism, it was a cynical power struggle. Ben-Gurion needed to establish the state's monopoly on force and could not tolerate Menachem Begin's private terrorist gang. After the confrontation, Irgun fighters were not punished. They were absorbed into the IDF, where their terrorist skills became state assets.
This move whitewashes what the Irgun actually was. Long before "Israel" absorbed them, they were internationally recognized as terrorists (even by the US AND UK!) for terrorism e.g. like the King-David Hotel bombing. In a famous letter, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt called Begin's organization terrorists and "closely akin in its organization, methods, [and] political philosophy to the Nazi and Fascist parties."
The ultimate proof that Israel never rejected its terrorist ideology is the career of the Irgun commander himself, Menachem Begin. He was never tried as a traitor or a terrorist. He founded the party that would become Likud and was later elected Prime Minister. Israel didn't purge its terrorist founders, it eventually put one in charge of Israel.
I agree with lots of that actually! The altalena affair is a shameful stain on ben gurions legacy although he might have been justified in distrusting Begin considering how much the irgun had been relentlessly persecuted. But Begins decision not to descend into civil war over it speaks volumes about his moral fortitude and clarity. For Begin violence and terrorism was a means to an end not a way of life. When peace was an option he took that path. It was Begin who made peace with Israels mortal enemies - Egypt and he did the unthinkable, gave back the sinai peninsula.
Shamir too, saw no further use for violence after 1948 and eventually took to politics and only in that theater did he engage with his mortal enemies on the left.
I can't help but contrast that with the actions of Yasser Arafat who unleashed the second intifada on Israel after signing the Oslo Accords or hamas who used the de facto palestinian state of gaza as a base to launch attacks and missiles at Israel.
It is truly incredible to see those Zionist terrorist's pragmatic calculation rebranded as "moral fortitude." Begin avoided a civil war because he knew his extremist ideology would eventually conquer the state from within, and he was proven right.
The idea that violence for him and Shamir was just a "means to an end" that stopped in 1948 is a complete fantasy. They simply nationalized their terrorism. Begin didn't find peace. He swapped his Irgun uniform for a state uniform to launch the brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon and to oversee a massive, violent expansion of illegal settlements. His "peace" with Egypt was a strategic masterstroke. It neutralized his biggest military threat, freeing him up to colonize Palestine with impunity.
This continuous, state-sanctioned violence was never just random. It was the implementation of an ideology that sees Palestinians as subhuman obstacles. And now, that project has reached its logical and horrifying conclusion. It has culminated in what leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and hundreds of the world's foremost genocide scholars explicitly call it: the crime of genocide.[1][2]
So your attempt to contrast this with Palestinian leaders is a disgusting exercise in victim-blaming. You are defending the architects of a political project that resulted in genocide, while slandering its victims for resisting their own extermination. It is a morally bankrupt position that rests on a complete inversion of reality.
Who are they a victim of exactly? Hamas can't be a victim when they are still actively holding onto hostages and started this whole war. You can say it's the average gazan, so long as they don't support Hamas. Which makes them a victim of both Israel and Hamas which is a fair claim, but they have been horribly let down by their leaders while Israel hasn't, which was kind of my point?
I would suggest you read about the context of events you're trying strip off its context. It didn't happen in a vacuum. It was a brutal outburst in the context of a British-backed colonial project that was openly planning to take over Palestine. At that point, Zionist colonialism was also in full force and the worst fears of the natives who resisted your colonialism were proven correct. It's like saying "I would suggest reading about the 1939 Bydgoszcz massacre in Poland against the German settlers" without providing any context as to why there were so many settlers there to begin with.
The Nakba was the foundational event of the state of Israel and the source of the refugee crisis. That is the subject, and your desperate attempt to derail the conversation with that false equivalence was predictable.
As everything it is complex, some might think that mass killings, rape, decapitations, and ethnic cleansing of a non zionist jewish population is not a valid reaction to legal zionist buying of land.
However, the poster above seemed to indicate "it all started with the Nakba" which is very wrong chronologically, and of course also predated the Hebron massacre
Meh that's just your typical Zionist atrocity propaganda on steroids similar to the "40 beheaded babies" hoax, you're basically projecting on them what you Zionists have done to Palestinians for a century.
>However, the poster above seemed to indicate "it all started with the Nakba" which is very wrong chronologically, and of course also predated the Hebron massacre
Zionist colonialism started even before the 1900s[1], that's almost half a century before that event, so you have to revise your hasbara narrative such that it isn't that blatantly ahistorical.
The fact is that the extreme organizations in Israel were the absolute minority and when push came to shove, they were subdued and integrated.
Hence the state has successfully enforced its monopoly on violence.
When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
Subdued by having your organization dismantled and effectively disappears, becoming a political party, this did not even happen to the Fatah which is the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority, the moderate faction among the Palestinians
In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state".
If in the 70 years that passed there was no longer Lehi or Etzel, then these organizations disappeared.
If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared
Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
You are deliberately playing a semantic game with the word "disappear" because you know the truth is damning.
The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals?
And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza.
The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets.
You seem to somehow say I am misconstruing the word disappear, but everyone that was part of the Etzel/Lehi is either dead or dying. The organization itself does not exist for so many decades in no meaningful way, that I really feel I am repeating myself.
Your arguments have been reduced to changing the Irgun to some metaphor or what you don't like about Israel actions.
This doesn't change the fact that Israel had handled it terrorist problem in the transition to a state, while the Palestinians never succeeded in doing so, which had led them to be controlled by such an entity, culminating in that entity taking them on a national suicide in 2023
You are missing the point on purpose because the reality is indefensible. You talk about dead bodies because you can't talk about the ideology that outlived them.
That's not a "metaphor", but a direct and documented political bloodline. The Irgun's violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology was channeled directly into the Herut party[0], which became the Likud party, which put the Irgun's commander, Menachem Begin, in the Prime Minister's office. The Dahiya Doctrine isn't a metaphor, but Irgun's philosophy of collective punishment aka terrorism written down as official state policy.
And let's put down this already debunked lie you keep repeating. Israel did not "handle" its terrorist problem. It institutionalized it. It promoted it. It didn't have a version of Altalena to crush its extremists. It had an Altalena to consolidate power, and then it put the terrorist leader of the Altalena in charge of the entire "state". You didn't solve your terrorism problem. You made terrorism your state policy, which now manifested itself in the inevitable conclusion of Genocide.
[0] The same Herut party btw about whom Einstein said: "a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." - https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-04/ty-article/.premiu...
Menachem Begin went on to sign the peace accord with Egypt
Shamir mentioned earlier was part of the Israeli-Palestine Madrid Conference which was the precursor to the Oslo accords.
The Likud party is the one the removed all settlements and all Israeli troops from Gaza at the time.
Do you think these are indications of the Etzel/Lehi ideology? I think you will find life is more complex than propaganda
Your take on the Dahiya Doctrine is going in time 70 years, and therefore is extremely anachronistic, especially military tactics-wise
You are presenting a very shallow representation of a very long period of time and very complex politics. I am not sure if on purpose or due to shallow understanding of the conflict.
You call his analysis "shallow," but you are the one cherry-picking isolated facts from a deep and bloody history of Zionist terrorism. Let's look at the supposedly "complex" reality you're trying to whitewash.
You mention Begin's peace with Egypt. That was not about "peace" but a cynical, strategic move that took the biggest Arab army off the board so Zionists could invade Lebanon and accelerate the violent colonization of the West Bank.
Then you mention the Likud removing settlements from Gaza. That was Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to turn Gaza into an open-air prison and, in the documented words of his own top advisor, "freeze the peace process indefinitely."[0]
These are not rejections of the Irgun's ideology. They are its most cunning applications.
And your claim that the Dahiya Doctrine is "anachronistic" is nonsense, even Biden had the honesty to admit it when he recognized it.[1] It is the modern, state-sanctioned culmination of the Irgun's terrorist philosophy of collective punishment. Their ideology didn't vanish, it just became Israeli state policy. The only complexity in that is your attempt to whitewash it. It's a straight line, and you are deliberately trying to obscure it.
Reading your post and other posts, and similarly other posters here, it seems that getting to a shared truth, or even new understanding is hardly the goal.
Rather it is only trying to put everything in a childish context of good vs bad. Where the "evil" was predetermined. I don't subscribe to the evil vs good analysis of the world events, which in my opinion is a bit childish.
I therefore let you and the three other users keep copy pasting "Dahiya Doctrine" which I would never ever think of connecting to the Irgun, and I still struggle to see the connection. So although I am intrigued how you all got to this shared deeply anachronistic idea, I'll let that curiosity pass this time
After having your cherry-picked "facts" dismantled, your last resort is to feign intellectual superiority and pretend to be above the conversation. It's not a "childish" story of good versus evil. It's an analysis of cause and effect, which you are desperately trying to whitewash.
You claim you "struggle to see the connection" between the Irgun and the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. Let me make it simple for you, since you find reality so "complex." The Irgun's philosophy was to use terrorism against a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The Dahiya Doctrine is the state-sanctioned military policy of using disproportionate force against a civilian population to achieve a political goal.
It's the same ideology. It just evolved from primitive bombs to a state-funded air force. Your refusal to see this direct, documented line is not a sign of intellectual curiosity, but a Zionist's attempt at upholding an impossible cognitive dissonance.
That's a complete misreading of history and a dishonest attempt to deflect from the point by invoking a false equivalence.
First you claim the Zionist extremists were an "absolute minority." The Revisionist Zionism of the Irgun was never a fringe belief, it was a powerful and central pillar of the Zionist movement. And in the end, their ideology won. They weren't just "integrated", they took over.
Furthermore, the idea that they were "subdued" is laughable. You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state".
Finally, your comparison to the Palestinians in the 1990s is a disgusting and intellectually bankrupt false equivalence. You are comparing an internal power struggle between factions of a ruthless colonizing power with the struggle of an occupied people living under a brutal military occupation. There is no parallel. It's a classic victim-blaming tactic designed to absolve the occupier of its responsibility and guilt https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
That's completely incorrect by the way, most of Israel of that time was socialist (or communist) and supported the left wing parties behind Haganah and the Palmach. You can easily see it in the size of the political parties and relevant militant organizations.
Regarding my comparison, I think it's very valid. The Palestinians had a huge leadership problem which led them here.
Among many things such as rejecting peace offers, most stem from bowing down to extremists, lying to their own people and never being able to have their own version of Altalena
The expected Zionist modus operandi, whitewash Zionist crimes, then blame the victim for responding.
Your "socialist" argument is a weak attempt to hide behind a political label. It doesn't matter what they called themselves. The "socialist"[1] Haganah and Palmach were the main engines of the Nakba. The distinction between them and the Irgun was a public relations strategy, a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the same unified colonial project of dispossessing Palestinians.
The Altalena was a colonizing force consolidating its monopoly on violence to better oppress and dispossess the Palestinians. You cannot compare that to a occupied population struggling under a foreign military boot. Palestinian "leadership problems" and disunity are a direct result of decades of Israeli assassinations, imprisonment, and engineered fragmentation.[2]
I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact
While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire.
You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of the first paper of a humanities bachelor dorm room.
Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem, currently? Do you think they can do something about it?
You're trying to change the subject to a 1948 popularity contest because you can't refute the fact that the Irgun's extremist terrorist ideology won and became Israel's "state" policy. You resort to mocking the analysis with academic jargon because you're terrified of admitting that you're defending a colonial project that is currently in its final phase of exterminating the natives it couldn't get rid of in 1948.
Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
I disagree. The palestinians refuse to take any responsibility for any of the acts that takes place in their name. On the other hand they never condemn or disown them either. The target of their violence is often their fellow Arabs but usually it's Jews. But always the people who suffer the most from their actions are their own. Yet their behaviour is rarely condemned and often implictly and explicitly encouraged. With such a mindset how can there be a reasonable prospect for peace?
That is a disgustingly cynical and dishonest argument, a masterclass in colonial propaganda.
You demand the people being crushed under a boot "take responsibility," while giving a pass to Zionists who have all the power and are the perpetrators responsible for it all. It's a sick moral inversion. You cry about a lack of peace while defending the Zionist entity that has demonstrated for a century that it is not interested in peace, only in surrender and domination. Also, the audacity to speak of a "prospect for peace" when Zionists has systematically sabotaged it at every turn, even murdering diplomats during negotiations.[0]
Another classic Zionist deflection is to make it about "Jews" so you can deflect from the racist[1], European colonial project that they are resisting. This is not a religious war. It is an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism. The only people who insist on making it about "Jews" are the Zionists themselves, because it's their most effective propaganda shield.
The violence you clutch your pearls over is the inevitable, desperate product of a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. You are blaming the oppressed for the consequences of their own oppression. It is the oldest and most pathetic trick in the colonial playbook.
[1] "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
You might call it a cynical colonial propaganda. However, I believe that someone who is so insistent on removing any agency from the Palestinians is actually someone who echos colonial propaganda.
One of the historical motivations for colonialism is seeing the 'natives' as merely children without agency that need the benevolent west's help, which is the exact dehumanizing vibe applied whenever someone suggests Palestinians may also have the concept of responsibility
That is such an intellectually dishonest attempt to flip the script, accusing him of the very colonial racism your entire project is built on.
You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.
And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.
I am not confusing anything, you (or the other poster that shares your exact same style) wrote three paragraphs previously about how it is disallowed to attribute responsibility to the Palestinians.
That seems very racist to me, why would you think a people capable of conducting an attack such as was done on October 7, is incapable of choosing more peaceful leadership? Why even the mere thought of the Palestinians being able to affect their future amounts to heresy?
Removing agency from natives is the mark of colonial thought, and it is no surprise that western thought that is stuck in colonial times (post-colonialism) kept the old colonial racist stereotypes
Another blatant reversal of reality. You are deliberately twisting my words. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is the direct, inevitable consequence of your century of colonial violence is not "removing agency." It is the ultimate respect for their agency. It treats them as human beings who refuse to be objects of your ethnic cleansing. The real colonial mindset is your demand that they must politely submit to their own extermination.
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign.
Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
Another notable Swede is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued Swedish passports and sheltered thousands of Jews in Budapest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg . He disappeared and died in Russian captivity.
(Random lighthearted fact: because his exact date of death is disputed, Google's AI summary in the search results tells me his age is 113.)
On another scale, Carl Gustaf von Rosen was a Swedish count who defended Biafra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_von_Rosen
The craziest one to me is still that Fridtjof Nansen's main sidekick in helping Armenian refugees was .... Vidkun Quisling.
It's not so surprising. Nansen was conservative-ish politically. Seeing the effects of the famine in Ukraine radicalized Quisling as a fanatical anti-socialist. He also married a Ukrainian woman (bigamously, but that's another story). As a fanatical anti-socialist in the 20s-30s he fell in with the wrong crowd.
Who knows if Nansen too would have, if he had lived to see the rise of Hitler. Probably not, as he was usually fairly ambivalent about politics, but it wouldn't have been terribly surprising either.
I have the AI summary stuff disabled but the regular Google infobox tells me he died in 1947 aged 34. Kinda amusing how the AI disagrees.
von Rosen and the Biafran Air Force is quite fascinating.
Crazy how awful the Russians were - same with Josef Bryks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Bryks
And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.
> And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.
Reality is really context dependent, and with lots of nuance. Obviously being anti-fascist and helped out taking down the Nazis makes you more of a "good guy" than "bad guy" for that specific moment, but obviously that doesn't mean the USSR or Russia is exclusively the "good guys" always, which goes the same for every country out there.
Where are you finding these young people praising the USSR though? It always seems like a talking point from conservatives on the internet, as I'm never able to find these elusive USSR-praisers in real-life. There is a ton of people ironically saying they love USSR, but surely these are not the people you're talking about?
Russians were allies with nazi Germany at the start of the war. They did not have any problem with nazi Germany when they invaded Poland together. Only later did they hate Germany because the Germans betrayed them. To this day Russians don't have a problem with facism (Russia is facist). They only have a problem with the nazis because they betrayed Russia.
The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.
I have no idea what was bad about the fascists that wasn't equally true of the Soviets - the underlying systems of thought and actions were essentially the same. There is no sense in which I can see the Soviets were the "good guys." They were simply allies of convenience, and the net result of the war was that half of Europe was handed over to them and lived under this horrific regime.
I'd like to hear from the individuals who downvoted this post why they did so as it seems to be factually correct.
>The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.
Trumps America soon: hold my beer
[dead]
Maybe my perspective is slanted, but it seems that nobility was way more badass back then. Nowadays they just hide out in Saint-Tropez, Monaco, or chill on their yachts and don't care much about the world.
I think your perspective is slanted. 99% of nobility were materialistic, detached (and probably inbred) sociopaths, just like 99% of billionaires and heads of state today.
The Stern gang, who killed him, became the IDF (along with the Haganah and the Irgun). These groups performed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that allowed Israel to be built on Palestinian land (commonly known as the Nakba).
> One of the chief organisers of the assassination was Yitzhak Shamir, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1984.
Exactly.
This is the part that I never understood about US-Israeli relations, that they were going on doing terrible deeds from the beginning.
How exactly did they go from these constant attacks including on a close ally like the British to “Greatest Ally” status.
The UK is also historically a strong ally of Israel. Like other former colonies they looked to britain for help and guidance. After all the whole state was built on British foundations. After a while britain realised it was in their interests to help Israel and their relationship even today is one of mutual respect.
I think it goes to show the limits of the conflict between the British and the jews of palestine. It was never personal and therefore while there was much anger and resentment, there was never any hate.
The history of how the alliance came about is fascinating. It started with the suez war. Their relationship with the US came about at the same time as the breakdown with the French and was helped by the fact that the US saw Israel as a convenient proxy against the Soviets.
That is one of the most grotesque whitewashes of Zionist terrorism I have ever read. You are trying to rewrite a story of Zionist terrorism and colonial succession into a heartwarming family drama.
The idea that Zionists were just a colony "looking to Britain for guidance" is an understatement. They were a de facto rival colonial project that used terror to expel the British, the Zionists even ironically described the British as occupiers of Palestine.[0] The Zionists weren't looking for "guidance," they were busy planting bombs[1]. Your claim that it was "never personal" and there was "no hate" is a disgusting lie. Tell that to the families of the British sergeants the Irgun hanged and booby-trapped. Tell that to the scores of British officials murdered in the King David Hotel bombing. It was a vicious Zionist terror campaign, and pretending otherwise is obscene.
Finally, your "convenient proxy" explanation sanitizes the ugly truth. The West didn't ally with Israel despite its history of terrorism, but they allied with it because of it. Israel's violent founding proved it could be a ruthless and effective enforcer for Western imperial interests. That is the real foundation of your "special relationship."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war.
Something the Palestinians could never muster, and one of the reasons they are still in this position, stateless under the control of Hamas
> The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF, claiming dead and almost triggering a civil war.
So that means the terrorists, especially the leaders, were tried and punished for their crimes?
No, but it means twenty people died in the process of forcing them to disintegrate
The context from the Palestinian side is quite different and comparing the two is flawed for many reasons:
There was never a consensus on the Oslo accords from both sides. While the Israeli Labor pushed for the process, the Likud and the rest of right wingers worked thoroughly to undermine it. And on the Palestinian side, the OLP, essentially Fatah, went on to accept terms every other Palestinian faction refused to adhere to (demilitarized state, practically land-locked on a mozaic of patches that amounts to a fraction of the country's total area and surrounded everywhere with ever-increasing Israeli settlement projects.
That effectively weakened Fatah's position which essentially morphed into a caretaker on behalf of the Israelis for the day-to-day. And the resistance weight shifted from secular factions to the Hamas.
The claim that "The Irgun was forcibly integrated into the IDF" is a classic piece of Zionist propaganda because it uses a technically true event, the Altalena Affair, to paint a profoundly false picture. It's a self-serving myth designed to launder the history of the Irgun and create a clean break between the "respectable" new "state" of Israel and its terrorist antecedents, a break that never truly happened.
The Altalena incident was not a moral battle against terrorism, it was a cynical power struggle. Ben-Gurion needed to establish the state's monopoly on force and could not tolerate Menachem Begin's private terrorist gang. After the confrontation, Irgun fighters were not punished. They were absorbed into the IDF, where their terrorist skills became state assets.
This move whitewashes what the Irgun actually was. Long before "Israel" absorbed them, they were internationally recognized as terrorists (even by the US AND UK!) for terrorism e.g. like the King-David Hotel bombing. In a famous letter, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt called Begin's organization terrorists and "closely akin in its organization, methods, [and] political philosophy to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The ultimate proof that Israel never rejected its terrorist ideology is the career of the Irgun commander himself, Menachem Begin. He was never tried as a traitor or a terrorist. He founded the party that would become Likud and was later elected Prime Minister. Israel didn't purge its terrorist founders, it eventually put one in charge of Israel.
I agree with lots of that actually! The altalena affair is a shameful stain on ben gurions legacy although he might have been justified in distrusting Begin considering how much the irgun had been relentlessly persecuted. But Begins decision not to descend into civil war over it speaks volumes about his moral fortitude and clarity. For Begin violence and terrorism was a means to an end not a way of life. When peace was an option he took that path. It was Begin who made peace with Israels mortal enemies - Egypt and he did the unthinkable, gave back the sinai peninsula.
Shamir too, saw no further use for violence after 1948 and eventually took to politics and only in that theater did he engage with his mortal enemies on the left.
I can't help but contrast that with the actions of Yasser Arafat who unleashed the second intifada on Israel after signing the Oslo Accords or hamas who used the de facto palestinian state of gaza as a base to launch attacks and missiles at Israel.
It is truly incredible to see those Zionist terrorist's pragmatic calculation rebranded as "moral fortitude." Begin avoided a civil war because he knew his extremist ideology would eventually conquer the state from within, and he was proven right.
The idea that violence for him and Shamir was just a "means to an end" that stopped in 1948 is a complete fantasy. They simply nationalized their terrorism. Begin didn't find peace. He swapped his Irgun uniform for a state uniform to launch the brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon and to oversee a massive, violent expansion of illegal settlements. His "peace" with Egypt was a strategic masterstroke. It neutralized his biggest military threat, freeing him up to colonize Palestine with impunity.
This continuous, state-sanctioned violence was never just random. It was the implementation of an ideology that sees Palestinians as subhuman obstacles. And now, that project has reached its logical and horrifying conclusion. It has culminated in what leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and hundreds of the world's foremost genocide scholars explicitly call it: the crime of genocide.[1][2]
So your attempt to contrast this with Palestinian leaders is a disgusting exercise in victim-blaming. You are defending the architects of a political project that resulted in genocide, while slandering its victims for resisting their own extermination. It is a morally bankrupt position that rests on a complete inversion of reality.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
Who are they a victim of exactly? Hamas can't be a victim when they are still actively holding onto hostages and started this whole war. You can say it's the average gazan, so long as they don't support Hamas. Which makes them a victim of both Israel and Hamas which is a fair claim, but they have been horribly let down by their leaders while Israel hasn't, which was kind of my point?
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> It started with the Nakba
I would suggest you read about the Hebron 1929 massacre which ethnically cleansed the largely non-zionist Hebron population
I would suggest you read about the context of events you're trying strip off its context. It didn't happen in a vacuum. It was a brutal outburst in the context of a British-backed colonial project that was openly planning to take over Palestine. At that point, Zionist colonialism was also in full force and the worst fears of the natives who resisted your colonialism were proven correct. It's like saying "I would suggest reading about the 1939 Bydgoszcz massacre in Poland against the German settlers" without providing any context as to why there were so many settlers there to begin with. The Nakba was the foundational event of the state of Israel and the source of the refugee crisis. That is the subject, and your desperate attempt to derail the conversation with that false equivalence was predictable.
As everything it is complex, some might think that mass killings, rape, decapitations, and ethnic cleansing of a non zionist jewish population is not a valid reaction to legal zionist buying of land.
However, the poster above seemed to indicate "it all started with the Nakba" which is very wrong chronologically, and of course also predated the Hebron massacre
Meh that's just your typical Zionist atrocity propaganda on steroids similar to the "40 beheaded babies" hoax, you're basically projecting on them what you Zionists have done to Palestinians for a century.
"PRESS RELEASES INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION
“More than a human can bear”: Israel's systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/more-human-c... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-sexual-abuse-pales...
"U.S. decries reported sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners after graphic video aired on Israeli TV https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-sexual-abuse-pales...
>However, the poster above seemed to indicate "it all started with the Nakba" which is very wrong chronologically, and of course also predated the Hebron massacre
Zionist colonialism started even before the 1900s[1], that's almost half a century before that event, so you have to revise your hasbara narrative such that it isn't that blatantly ahistorical.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Colonisation_Associatio...
The fact is that the extreme organizations in Israel were the absolute minority and when push came to shove, they were subdued and integrated. Hence the state has successfully enforced its monopoly on violence.
When the same thing could have happened in the 1990s with the Palestinians, the exact opposite result happened. A huge mistake from the Palestinian side which left them way worse off (and only getting worse)
How are you subdued if you become the prime minister?
Subdued by having your organization dismantled and effectively disappears, becoming a political party, this did not even happen to the Fatah which is the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority, the moderate faction among the Palestinians
In Israel 40 years passed before he was elected as prime minister, by the way
You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300708
If in the 70 years that passed there was no longer Lehi or Etzel, then these organizations disappeared.
If they became part of a nation army, divided across the different units, and most of their men discharged after the war, then these organizations disappeared
Had the IDF adopted the Etzel tactics of bombing the British as you suggest that would probably cause immense issues in the next desert tank war fought in 1956
You are deliberately playing a semantic game with the word "disappear" because you know the truth is damning.
The Irgun didn't "vanish." Its violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology succeeded. It then took over the "state", making the old brand name redundant. Why would Menachem Begin need a private terrorist gang when he could one day command the entire military to achieve his goals?
And your argument about tactics is a pathetic diversion. The state adopted the Irgun's core ethos, a readiness to use extreme, disproportionate violence and terrorism for political ends. This is the "state" whose military ruthlessly attacked[0] its own "greatest Ally", an American naval intelligence ship, the USS Liberty including its crew, and later formalized its terrorist strategy of collective punishment into an explicit military policy, the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. The violence wasn't abandoned. It was industrialized. Instead of a terrorist bombing a hotel, Prime Minister Begin used the full force of the air force to carpet-bomb Lebanon and Gaza.
The Irgun didn't disappear. It just took over the "state" and evolved its terrorism by trading its primitive zionist bombs for high-tech fighter jets.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
You seem to somehow say I am misconstruing the word disappear, but everyone that was part of the Etzel/Lehi is either dead or dying. The organization itself does not exist for so many decades in no meaningful way, that I really feel I am repeating myself.
Your arguments have been reduced to changing the Irgun to some metaphor or what you don't like about Israel actions.
This doesn't change the fact that Israel had handled it terrorist problem in the transition to a state, while the Palestinians never succeeded in doing so, which had led them to be controlled by such an entity, culminating in that entity taking them on a national suicide in 2023
You are missing the point on purpose because the reality is indefensible. You talk about dead bodies because you can't talk about the ideology that outlived them.
That's not a "metaphor", but a direct and documented political bloodline. The Irgun's violent, expansionist and terrorist ideology was channeled directly into the Herut party[0], which became the Likud party, which put the Irgun's commander, Menachem Begin, in the Prime Minister's office. The Dahiya Doctrine isn't a metaphor, but Irgun's philosophy of collective punishment aka terrorism written down as official state policy.
And let's put down this already debunked lie you keep repeating. Israel did not "handle" its terrorist problem. It institutionalized it. It promoted it. It didn't have a version of Altalena to crush its extremists. It had an Altalena to consolidate power, and then it put the terrorist leader of the Altalena in charge of the entire "state". You didn't solve your terrorism problem. You made terrorism your state policy, which now manifested itself in the inevitable conclusion of Genocide.
[0] The same Herut party btw about whom Einstein said: "a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." - https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-04/ty-article/.premiu...
Menachem Begin went on to sign the peace accord with Egypt
Shamir mentioned earlier was part of the Israeli-Palestine Madrid Conference which was the precursor to the Oslo accords.
The Likud party is the one the removed all settlements and all Israeli troops from Gaza at the time.
Do you think these are indications of the Etzel/Lehi ideology? I think you will find life is more complex than propaganda
Your take on the Dahiya Doctrine is going in time 70 years, and therefore is extremely anachronistic, especially military tactics-wise
You are presenting a very shallow representation of a very long period of time and very complex politics. I am not sure if on purpose or due to shallow understanding of the conflict.
You call his analysis "shallow," but you are the one cherry-picking isolated facts from a deep and bloody history of Zionist terrorism. Let's look at the supposedly "complex" reality you're trying to whitewash.
You mention Begin's peace with Egypt. That was not about "peace" but a cynical, strategic move that took the biggest Arab army off the board so Zionists could invade Lebanon and accelerate the violent colonization of the West Bank.
Then you mention the Likud removing settlements from Gaza. That was Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to turn Gaza into an open-air prison and, in the documented words of his own top advisor, "freeze the peace process indefinitely."[0]
These are not rejections of the Irgun's ideology. They are its most cunning applications. And your claim that the Dahiya Doctrine is "anachronistic" is nonsense, even Biden had the honesty to admit it when he recognized it.[1] It is the modern, state-sanctioned culmination of the Irgun's terrorist philosophy of collective punishment. Their ideology didn't vanish, it just became Israeli state policy. The only complexity in that is your attempt to whitewash it. It's a straight line, and you are deliberately trying to obscure it.
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/2004-10-06/ty-article/top-pm-aide-ga...
[1] "Biden takes a tougher stance on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate bombing’ of Gaza" https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d...
Reading your post and other posts, and similarly other posters here, it seems that getting to a shared truth, or even new understanding is hardly the goal.
Rather it is only trying to put everything in a childish context of good vs bad. Where the "evil" was predetermined. I don't subscribe to the evil vs good analysis of the world events, which in my opinion is a bit childish.
I therefore let you and the three other users keep copy pasting "Dahiya Doctrine" which I would never ever think of connecting to the Irgun, and I still struggle to see the connection. So although I am intrigued how you all got to this shared deeply anachronistic idea, I'll let that curiosity pass this time
After having your cherry-picked "facts" dismantled, your last resort is to feign intellectual superiority and pretend to be above the conversation. It's not a "childish" story of good versus evil. It's an analysis of cause and effect, which you are desperately trying to whitewash.
You claim you "struggle to see the connection" between the Irgun and the Dahiya Doctrine[1]. Let me make it simple for you, since you find reality so "complex." The Irgun's philosophy was to use terrorism against a civilian population to achieve a political goal. The Dahiya Doctrine is the state-sanctioned military policy of using disproportionate force against a civilian population to achieve a political goal.
It's the same ideology. It just evolved from primitive bombs to a state-funded air force. Your refusal to see this direct, documented line is not a sign of intellectual curiosity, but a Zionist's attempt at upholding an impossible cognitive dissonance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
That's a complete misreading of history and a dishonest attempt to deflect from the point by invoking a false equivalence.
First you claim the Zionist extremists were an "absolute minority." The Revisionist Zionism of the Irgun was never a fringe belief, it was a powerful and central pillar of the Zionist movement. And in the end, their ideology won. They weren't just "integrated", they took over.
Furthermore, the idea that they were "subdued" is laughable. You do not "subdue" a movement by absorbing its members into your army and then electing its terrorist commander as your Prime Minister. Menachem Begin was not defeated, he was promoted. The state didn't end the Irgun's terrorism, it nationalized it, making the Irgun's tactics and goals the official policy of the "state". Finally, your comparison to the Palestinians in the 1990s is a disgusting and intellectually bankrupt false equivalence. You are comparing an internal power struggle between factions of a ruthless colonizing power with the struggle of an occupied people living under a brutal military occupation. There is no parallel. It's a classic victim-blaming tactic designed to absolve the occupier of its responsibility and guilt https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
That's completely incorrect by the way, most of Israel of that time was socialist (or communist) and supported the left wing parties behind Haganah and the Palmach. You can easily see it in the size of the political parties and relevant militant organizations.
Regarding my comparison, I think it's very valid. The Palestinians had a huge leadership problem which led them here. Among many things such as rejecting peace offers, most stem from bowing down to extremists, lying to their own people and never being able to have their own version of Altalena
The expected Zionist modus operandi, whitewash Zionist crimes, then blame the victim for responding.
Your "socialist" argument is a weak attempt to hide behind a political label. It doesn't matter what they called themselves. The "socialist"[1] Haganah and Palmach were the main engines of the Nakba. The distinction between them and the Irgun was a public relations strategy, a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the same unified colonial project of dispossessing Palestinians.
The Altalena was a colonizing force consolidating its monopoly on violence to better oppress and dispossess the Palestinians. You cannot compare that to a occupied population struggling under a foreign military boot. Palestinian "leadership problems" and disunity are a direct result of decades of Israeli assassinations, imprisonment, and engineered fragmentation.[2]
[1] 'The Dark History of "Left-Wing" Zionism' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp9PZo4UR0
[2] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
I am merely stating a fact, the poster above tried to say that the Irgun had popular support, that is false. The population was socialist, that is a fact
While your representation of what happened in Altalena is so overly post-colonialist it almost reads like satire.
You keep failing to address my original argument, while trying to show any keyword I write is some part of a post-colonial masterplan straight out of the first paper of a humanities bachelor dorm room.
Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem, currently? Do you think they can do something about it?
You're trying to change the subject to a 1948 popularity contest because you can't refute the fact that the Irgun's extremist terrorist ideology won and became Israel's "state" policy. You resort to mocking the analysis with academic jargon because you're terrified of admitting that you're defending a colonial project that is currently in its final phase of exterminating the natives it couldn't get rid of in 1948.
Your last question is an amusing piece of Zionist projection. "Don't you think Palestinians have a terrorist organization problem?" - That's rich, coming from an apologist of a colonial project founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and whose state terrorism has culminated in genocide. The very group you're pointing at was propped up with cash by your own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, as a deliberate strategy to divide Palestinians. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
The core problem Palestinians have is a Zionist occupation problem. What they also have is an internationally recognized right to armed resistance against a foreign military occupier. Zionism, from the King David Hotel to the Dahiya Doctrine, is the one with the "terrorist problem." You just call it your "state" https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...
I disagree. The palestinians refuse to take any responsibility for any of the acts that takes place in their name. On the other hand they never condemn or disown them either. The target of their violence is often their fellow Arabs but usually it's Jews. But always the people who suffer the most from their actions are their own. Yet their behaviour is rarely condemned and often implictly and explicitly encouraged. With such a mindset how can there be a reasonable prospect for peace?
That is a disgustingly cynical and dishonest argument, a masterclass in colonial propaganda.
You demand the people being crushed under a boot "take responsibility," while giving a pass to Zionists who have all the power and are the perpetrators responsible for it all. It's a sick moral inversion. You cry about a lack of peace while defending the Zionist entity that has demonstrated for a century that it is not interested in peace, only in surrender and domination. Also, the audacity to speak of a "prospect for peace" when Zionists has systematically sabotaged it at every turn, even murdering diplomats during negotiations.[0]
Another classic Zionist deflection is to make it about "Jews" so you can deflect from the racist[1], European colonial project that they are resisting. This is not a religious war. It is an anti-colonial struggle against Zionism. The only people who insist on making it about "Jews" are the Zionists themselves, because it's their most effective propaganda shield.
The violence you clutch your pearls over is the inevitable, desperate product of a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. You are blaming the oppressed for the consequences of their own oppression. It is the oldest and most pathetic trick in the colonial playbook.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...
[1] "The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.
You might call it a cynical colonial propaganda. However, I believe that someone who is so insistent on removing any agency from the Palestinians is actually someone who echos colonial propaganda.
One of the historical motivations for colonialism is seeing the 'natives' as merely children without agency that need the benevolent west's help, which is the exact dehumanizing vibe applied whenever someone suggests Palestinians may also have the concept of responsibility
That is such an intellectually dishonest attempt to flip the script, accusing him of the very colonial racism your entire project is built on.
You are dishonestly confusing explaining the context of oppression with denying agency. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is a direct response to a century of your violence is the ultimate sign of respecting their agency. It is treating them as human beings who fight back. Demanding they politely submit to their own ethnic-cleansing and extermination is what treats them like objects.
And let's be clear about who is actually echoing colonial propaganda. The ideology that sees natives as less than human is yours. It's the ideology of Weizmann, who called the Palestinians "kushim" of "no value." Don't you dare project your project's inherent, documented racism onto others while you are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state.
I am not confusing anything, you (or the other poster that shares your exact same style) wrote three paragraphs previously about how it is disallowed to attribute responsibility to the Palestinians.
That seems very racist to me, why would you think a people capable of conducting an attack such as was done on October 7, is incapable of choosing more peaceful leadership? Why even the mere thought of the Palestinians being able to affect their future amounts to heresy?
Removing agency from natives is the mark of colonial thought, and it is no surprise that western thought that is stuck in colonial times (post-colonialism) kept the old colonial racist stereotypes
Another blatant reversal of reality. You are deliberately twisting my words. Acknowledging that Palestinian resistance is the direct, inevitable consequence of your century of colonial violence is not "removing agency." It is the ultimate respect for their agency. It treats them as human beings who refuse to be objects of your ethnic cleansing. The real colonial mindset is your demand that they must politely submit to their own extermination.
And your question about choosing "peaceful leadership" is nauseatingly cynical as it is ironic. You are defending a genocidal apartheid ethno-state whose own Prime Minister, Netanyahu, admitted on record that his strategy was to fund Hamas precisely to ensure Palestinians would never have a unified leadership capable of negotiating for a state.[1] You assassinate their diplomats, jail their leaders, and prop up Hamas, and then you have the audacity to blame them for how they resist your genocidal colonization campaign. Don't you dare project your colonial project's inherent, documented racism onto others. Your rhetoric is nothing but manipulative deflection and projection.
[1] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
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Nobody needs to read that. Stop feeding the trolls.
It's been 1 day since the last hackernews mandated hour of Israeli hate